1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to methods and apparatus for providing statistical estimates useful for decision support, including computer networks and software configured to provide such decision support. The methods and apparatus described herein are particularly useful for providing information to health care providers and medical patients, but are not limited to such environments and can be used in a wide variety of fields in which regression analysis or statistical modeling is used as a decision support tool.
This application hereby incorporates by reference in its entirety another application filed on Mar. 6, 2006 by the same inventors as PCT/US06/07849 and entitled “Systems and Methods for Risk Stratification of Patient Populations.”
2. Description of the Related Art
The past decade of health services research has witnessed an explosion of prognostic models to help physicians understand the risks and benefits of proposed medical therapies. However, the application of such models to clinical practice has been limited by both their complexity and the lack of a practical mechanism for making them available at the time of medical decision-making.
The emergence of the internet and mobile computing devices has created new opportunities for researchers in the health care field to translate their evidence-based predictive models into clinical decision aids. However, a number of barriers continue to prevent researchers from taking advantage of these technologies, including: (1) a requisite expertise in a computer programming language or application development environment; (2) the challenge of creating a system that can adapt to a broad range of clinical practice settings, each with unique device and workflow constraints; (3) the need for a sustainable mechanism for updating predictive models and deploying revisions in a timely fashion; and (4) the difficulty of integrating with existing IT infrastructures and disparate clinical information systems.
Furthermore, both the patient and the attending health care professional should be involved in making clinical health care treatment decisions that affect the patient's desired heath goals and quality of life concerns. These decisions may vary depending upon the patient's age, sex, socioeconomic, demographic, clinical, and genetic or imaging characteristics, which generally affect the relative risk and benefits of outcomes of medical and surgical procedures.